Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan were freed Thursday as part of a massive prisoner exchange between Russia, the United States and several European countries.
The Wall Street Journal said Gershkovich and other Americans disembarked from a Russian plane in the Turkish capital, Ankara.
Under the deal — one of the largest prisoner swaps between Russia and the West since the Cold War and brokered by nations bitterly divided over Russia's war in Ukraine — 16 Westerners were freed in exchange for eight Russians held in the United States, Germany, Norway, Slovenia and Poland.
The Westerners included three U.S. citizens — Gershkovich, Whelan and radio journalist Alsu Kurmasheva — and U.S. permanent resident and Russian dissident Vladimir Karamurza, five German citizens and seven Russian dissidents, according to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. All were considered “unjustly detained” or, in the case of the Russians, political prisoners, he said.
“Now their ordeal is over and they are free,” President Biden said from the State Dining Room at the White House. “Soon, they will be in their wheelchairs and on their way home to see their families.”
Among the freed Russians was Vadim Krasikov, a colonel in Russia's FSB security service who was serving a life sentence in Germany for the murder of Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili.
Sullivan said the exchange marked the culmination of many months of “careful and complex negotiations.”
“There has never been an exchange of people like this since the Cold War,” he said. “And… never, to our knowledge, has there been an exchange involving so many countries, so many partners and allies together.”
Gershkovich, 32, was arrested in March 2023 by Russian security forces and accused of being a spy while on an information mission in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg. The Federal Security Service said he was acting on U.S. orders to collect state secrets — allegations he, the Wall Street Journal and the U.S. government rejected as false.
Nearly two weeks ago, Gershkovich was convicted of espionage in a trial the U.S. government called a sham. He was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security penal colony.
Whelan, a U.S. citizen, was arrested in 2018 on espionage charges after traveling to Moscow for a fellow Marine's wedding. The Michigan-based corporate security director was convicted in 2020 and sentenced to 16 years in prison.
The prisoner swap also saw the release of another journalist: Kurmasheva, a Russian-American editor for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a broadcaster funded by the US government, who was detained in October while visiting her elderly mother. On 22 July, Russia sentenced her to six and a half years in prison after accusing her of spreading false information about the Russian military.
The Biden administration had called for the release of the three prisoners.
“Journalism is clearly not a crime, here, there, or anywhere in the world,” Biden said at a White House correspondents’ dinner in April. “And Putin should release Evan and Alsu immediately. We are doing everything we can to bring home journalists, and all Americans, like Paul Whelan, who are being unjustly detained around the world.”
Gershkovich, who worked in the Wall Street Journal’s Moscow office until he was arrested, was the subject of an extensive “Free Evan” campaign. The paper sold T-shirts with the phrase #IStandWithEvan and placed a banner on its website indicating how many days, hours and minutes Gershkovich had been detained. On Thursday morning, the clock was still ticking at 491 days before it was replaced by a headline reporting on the exchange.
Following Gershkovich's conviction last month, Biden said the journalist had “committed no crime” and was “targeted by the Russian government because he is a journalist and an American.”
“There is no question that Russia is unjustly detaining Evan,” Biden said in a statement. “Evan has endured his ordeal with remarkable fortitude. We will not relent in our efforts to bring him home.”
The deal marked the first high-profile prisoner swap between Russia and the United States since December 2022, when WNBA star Brittney Griner was released in exchange for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
Amid the celebration, some U.S. senators questioned why the prisoner swap left out Pittsburgh teacher Marc Fogel, who has been held by Russia since August 2021. He is serving a 14-year sentence for possession of medical marijuana used to treat a serious back injury.
“As reports of a potential prisoner exchange become available, we urge that any exchange include Marc Fogel of Pennsylvania, along with Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich,” U.S. Senators Bob Casey (D-PA) and John Fetterman (D-PA), and U.S. Representatives Mike Kelly (R-PA), Chris Deluzio (D-PA), and Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA) said in a statement.
“Marc is a Pennsylvania professor with serious health issues who has been unjustly imprisoned in a Russian prison for three years, and as members of Congress representing Marc and his family, we have been pushing to bring Marc home as quickly as possible,” the senators said.
